Li sent this article to the comm-grad listserv. National recognition for everyone who participated in protests about the discriminatory international student fee! We rock! :-)
Some of our COM colleagues went all the way, I know of at least two who "refused to pay and risked possible deportation this fall."
The followingÝnews articleÝis copied from Daily Hampshire Gazette, Monday, 30 August, 2004. Sorry for double posting as it may be the case.
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ÝUmass ranked 7th on list of activist colleges
ÝBy Cheryl B. Wilson
Staff Writer
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Amherst- Mother Jones magazine has named the University of Massachusetts Amherst among the top 10 activist campuses in the country because of the spring protest against the international student fee.
Umass is rated seventh, just after Suffolk University in Boston-where 200 students turned their back on Gov. Mitt Romney commencement address because of his stand against gay marriage.
The magazine reports that 30 Umass students staged a two-day hunger strike and 400 students rallied against the $65-a semester international student fee. Student said the fee was imposed to pay for the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) although campus officials said only $5 of the new fee was for the federally-mandated program. The rest, according to officials, was intended to make up for a $240,000 cut in the budget for the international programs office.
Earlier this month, a labor arbitrator ordered Umass to rescind the fee, which he said was discriminatory based on national origin. Umass officials last week obeyed the order and promised to refund the $65 to each student who had paid it. Many international graduate students had refused to pay and risked possible deportation this fall.
Richard Reynolds of Mother Jones said he was unaware of the arbitration ruling or the universityís recent action.
The university of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez was ranked first in the country for a protest against a $150,000 Air Force ROTC building to academic use and refuse ROTC additional space on campus.
Other campuses on the top 10 list are UCLA, Spelman College in Georgia, California Community Colleges, Rutgers University in New Jersey, Mount St. Maryís University in Maryland, Arizona State University and University of California Berkeley.
This is the third time Umass has appeared on the list. In 1997, Umass was third for a sit-in by a coalition of students from Umass and surrounding colleges with a range of demands from scholarship money to daycare concerns and minority enrollment, Reynolds said.
In 2002, Umass was ranked seventh for the successful attempt by student resident assistants to unionize. That same year Hampshire College was 10th for a student-faculty resolution against the war in Afghanistan.
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